Redistricting: Florida Districts Maintain Status Quo

The redistricting process in Florida is complete and the results are in.  New district boundaries have been established for all three statewide district types: US Congress, State Senate and State House.

All districts for each district type, by law, now represent approximately the same number of people as measured by the 2010 US Census.  What is very interesting, however, is to look at how Republicans and Democrats fared in the redistricting process.  To do this we looked at the number of registered Democrats and registered Republicans in each district before and after the redistricting.  We then compared in how many districts each of the parties had a majority before and after the redistricting.  We only looked at voters who were registered as Democrat or Republican.  For our comparisons we did not look at voters with another party registration or at unaffiliated registered voters.

Florida 111th. and 113th. Congressional Districts by Republican and Democrat Voter Registration

What we found is that the status quo was maintained with great precision.  If we take the old 2001 district lines for the 111th. US Congress and we look at the number of Democrats and Republicans in each of the 25 districts in 2012 we see that there is a blue majority in 9 districts and a red majority in 16 districts.  During the last ten years the population in Florida grew faster than in the rest of the country and as a result Florida gained two more US House of Representatives seats in the 113th Congress after the 2010 Census.   If we look at the registered voters in each of the 27 new congressional districts in Florida we find that there are now 10 districts with a blue majority and 17 districts with a red majority.  The Democrats and Republicans each gained one district with a majority.

Florida 2001 and 2012 State Senate Disctricts by Republican and Democrat Voter Registration

At the state level the status quo was maintained as well.  Both the 2001 and the 2011 state senate lines give a majority to the Republicans in 22 districts and 18 to the Democrats.  Only in the State house is there a small change.  If we look at the 2012 voter registration in the 2001 state house districts the Republicans have a majority in 64 districts and the Democrats in 56.  After the redistricting the Republicans have a registered voter advantage in 63 districts and the Democrats in 57.  If we look at the total count the Democrats won one district and the Republicans lost one.

The table below shows the numbers for all three district types:

 Number of Districts with a registration advantage for Blue & Red before and after redistricting

If we look at the relative percentages the results show the same status quo.  Although the Democrats have a statewide registration advantage of 53% (compared to 47% for Republicans) they continue to be in the minority in all three district types.  In the 111th Congress the Democrats had the majority in 36% of the seats.  This edged up to 37% of the seats in the 113th Congress.  In the state senate the situation remained identical with 55% of the districts with a red majority versus 45% with a blue majority.  In the state house the Democrats edged up from a majority in 46.7% of the 2001 seats to 47.5% of the redistricted 2011 seats.

 Percentage of  Districts with a registration advantage for Blue & Red before and after redistricting

The above statistics are based on the Labels & Lists voter registration data.  These statistics can be generated in upcoming versions of VoterMapping  and CensusViewer Premium.  By law, use of VoterMapping is available to elected officials, candidates running for office and government agencies.  CensusViewer Premium is available to the general public.